Last sprint to the finish..

Slow progress with no wind and current against us was what we had to deal with through the night and up until 1600 (local time). For the last 4 hours we have sailed with our biggest spinnaker (S2), and now that is our only alternative as we are out of fuel. The gauge for the main tank did not move for the last 3 hours before we shut the engine off but we still have probably 20 l (5 gallons) on the small extra tank so we have enough to get in to the slip.

We have got a question from Berit, Sindre and Håkon about how much garbage we have counted on our trip. This garbage patch out here is circulating around the pacific high-pressure system as that is the driving force for the ocean current. On this trip, back to the mainland we have been north of this, at least for the last half. The first 2 days after we left Hawaii was not too bad either. Day 3-8 was like doing a slalom run between the plastic. After that it has not been too bad. With bad we mean we have counted 5-10 pieces in the half hour we have had lookout, the other days we have seen 2-5 pieces. The last two days we have not seen anything. Off course it was a lot of plastic, fishing nets, buoys, bottles, Styrofoam etc when we did not have the official look out too. As mentioned earlier, during the race to Hawaii, we sailed in the middle of the garbage patch and that was bad. We haven`t seen anything like that before. We believe the North Atlantic is not as bad as this since all the countries surrounding do have garbage handling systems which probably is the problem here.

Yesterday we thought that this report was going to be the last one but it will probably be at least 30 more hours until we are docked. 190 NM to Golden gate now and light but at least sailable conditions as we have made it to the south side of the remnants of the low-pressure system that has blocked the normal wind pattern. Normal wind will be back on Friday. Thanks for all the bottle posts again, you have made us speak and discuss again! Also thanks to Jack Bauer which as entertained us during the engine hours!